The upkeep of public areas and guest rooms is shaping up to be the most significant field of application for robotics in hospitality. Corridor and restaurant-floor cleaning ahead of breakfast service, automated linen trolleys, even mattress replacement on a principle similar to automotive battery-swapping: robotic tools will cover an increasingly broad operational scope, directly tied to the core business of accommodation.
Housekeeping remains one of hospitality’s most persistent pain points, facing a chronic shortage of skilled labour. Several operators already present robotics as a route to economic stabilisation in the face of this staffing pressure, in a context where room cleaning will be among the functions most exposed to automation in the years ahead.
An ecosystem of solutions set to expand, function by function
The range of robotic solutions applied to hospitality has already grown considerably in recent years and should eventually cover almost the entire operational chain, from reception to room cleaning. Maturity levels, however, will continue to vary widely from one category to another, ranging from products already on the market to projects still at prototype stage.
Floor and public-space cleaning
The most mature segment remains floor cleaning. The Phantas robot, from Chinese manufacturer Gausium, combines vacuuming, sweeping, scrubbing and dusting in a single unit, with an automatic dirt-detection system that limits intervention to the areas that actually need cleaning. It can cover up to 700 m² an hour, making it suitable for lobbies and long corridors. The same manufacturer offers Mira, a more compact version for medium-sized spaces, capable of sweeping and scrubbing in a single pass. Whiz, developed by Japan’s SoftBank Robotics, targets carpeted floors in particular through a “Teach & Repeat” technology: an operator shows the robot the route once, and it then reproduces it autonomously.
Room cleaning
In the more complex room-cleaning segment, the humanoid robot Zerith H1, developed by Chinese start-up Zerith Robotics, positions itself as one of the few projects designed to handle the real-world disorder of a hotel room. The Maidbot project, from a US start-up, aims to combine floor cleaning and bed-making in a single unit; it remained at prototype stage at the time of its announcement, with no confirmation of large-scale commercialisation since. Ultraviolet-light disinfection robots already complement this arrangement in some US properties and should become more widespread as costs fall.
Linen trolleys and in-hotel delivery
The in-room delivery segment remains the oldest and best documented. The Relay robot, developed by US company Savioke, provides secure autonomous indoor delivery in place of traditional room service; the company claims several hundred thousand deliveries completed since launch. Its Relay+ variant has been explicitly positioned as a response to the sector’s labour shortage, then estimated at more than 1.4 million vacant positions compared with pre-pandemic levels. Bear Robotics, another major US player, offers its Servi range for floor service, table clearing and equipment transport, with a Servi Lift variant designed for inter-floor deliveries in multi-storey hotels and buildings. Pudu Robotics’ FlashBot Arm, from the Chinese manufacturer already covered in our pages, combines an automated trolley with a manipulator arm, a configuration well suited to transporting linen and small equipment.
Luggage handling
Automated luggage storage remains a more niche use case. The Yobot robot, deployed at YOTEL New York, illustrates this application: a robotic arm stores and retrieves guests’ luggage, with guests scanning their case before it is placed in compact storage and returned to them on departure.
Reception and concierge services
Reception robots look set to keep multiplying at the front desk. Chinese firm OrionStar’s GreetingBot range offers models capable of handling information requests, assisting with check-in and carrying small items, in around thirty languages and around the clock. The Buddy robot, developed by French company Blue Frog Robotics, leans more towards emotional interaction than pure staff substitution, and stands as one of the only identified European players in this market to date, in the reception segment alone. According to a recent industry analysis, 48% of travellers now say they are comfortable with a robotic welcome at check-in, up from 31% in 2023, an acceptance rate expected to keep rising; a delivery robot running continuously already typically replaces 1.5 to 2 full-time equivalents.
Food and beverage
The food and beverage segment is not expected to be spared either, with humanoid robots such as ADAM, developed by US firm Richtech Robotics, already deployed in several American chains for autonomous drink preparation.
At this stage, no automated mattress-replacement system comparable to automotive battery-swapping could be identified as a publicly documented, commercially available product: for now, this use case remains more of an engineering avenue than a market reality, though nothing rules out it materialising in the coming years.
Europe: top market, bottom of the class on production
With 793 million international tourist arrivals in 2025, up 4% year-on-year, Europe remains by far the world’s leading tourist destination, with France and Spain alone occupying the top two spots in the country rankings. This foundation makes Europe the largest potential market for hospitality solutions of every kind, robotics included.
This economic weight is not, however, matched by an equivalent presence on the manufacturing side. Across all the segments outlined above, the Buddy reception robot designed by French company Blue Frog Robotics stands as the only identified European exception: the other players remain overwhelmingly Chinese (Gausium, Pudu Robotics, Zerith Robotics, OrionStar), American (Savioke, Bear Robotics, Richtech Robotics) or Japanese (SoftBank Robotics). A recent US regulatory change, restricting the import of certain foreign-made robotic devices since late July 2026, further illustrates that access to the American market cannot serve as an obvious growth avenue for prospective European manufacturers either.
What about investors?
The capital underpinning this market today is also, overwhelmingly, non-European. The best-documented example is Bear Robotics: after an initial $60 million investment in 2024, South Korea’s LG Electronics exercised a purchase option in 2025, raising its stake to 51% and thereby taking control of the American company, integrating it as a subsidiary. This move reflects a broader trend: the most active strategic investors in this segment are, at this stage, Asian and North American electronics or industrial groups, rather than European funds or industrial players.
On the distribution side, rather than manufacturing, INNOV8 Robotics became Gausium’s official regional distributor for France, Spain and Portugal in 2026 — an integrator role that accelerates adoption in the European market without constituting a local design base. Beyond Blue Frog Robotics in the reception segment alone, no structured, documented European manufacturer could be identified at this stage across the rest of the robotic functions applied to hospitality — a finding that, on its own, sums up the scale of the continent’s lag in this market.
Towards hotel groups becoming robotics players themselves?
Given this picture, one hypothesis is worth raising: some international hotel groups could, in time, be tempted to offer their own robotic solutions, particularly in the economy segment, in markets where labour shortages are most acute. Such a move would strengthen these brands’ image while addressing a concrete operational constraint. The only documented precedent to date is a partnership rather than in-house development: the integration of the Buddy reception robot by the Aiden brand, a new Best Western concept operated by Nordic group CIC Hospitality, which illustrates a logic of collaboration with a robotics specialist rather than in-house design. No major hotel group has, at this stage, announced plans to develop its own robot range internally, nor even entered into a documented pilot partnership with a European robotics manufacturer on room cleaning. This hypothesis therefore remains, for now, a forward-looking market reading rather than a movement already under way.
The stakes go beyond the purely operational question. The hotel industry has already lived through a comparable precedent with the rise of OTAs (online travel agencies), whereby part of the customer relationship, data and value captured on bookings slipped durably out of its hands and into those of external technology intermediaries. By not funding, or barely funding, robotics research applied to hospitality, hotel groups risk exposing themselves to a comparable scenario on different ground: room cleaning, as core a function as there is. Dependency on American or Chinese suppliers in this segment would raise questions that go beyond the purely commercial — around access to data on movement within properties, software maintenance and updates managed from abroad, and continuity of service in the event of geopolitical or trade tensions between economic blocs.
A global market set for strong growth
According to estimates from Mordor Intelligence, the global hotel robotics market grew from €525 million in 2025 to around €655 million in 2026, with a projection of €1.92 billion by 2031 — an average annual growth rate of 24.1%. This momentum will reflect, according to the firm, a strategic shift by operators towards automated service, in direct response to persistent staff shortages and travellers’ growing preference for low-contact interactions.
Other research firms put forward markedly different ranges depending on the scope used, with some broadening the analysis to include food service and leisure, and several placing North America ahead in value terms and Asia-Pacific as the fastest-growing region. These methodological discrepancies call for caution around absolute figures, but all are likely to converge on the same trend: double-digit growth driven by back-of-house automation, a segment expected to grow faster than guest-facing applications.
What impact on jobs? Signals still to be confirmed
A study by Washington State University, conducted among more than 620 hospitality employees and published in the International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, identified a “robot phobia” phenomenon: fear that robots will replace human jobs heightens insecurity and stress among staff, to the point of prompting some to consider resigning. The effect appeared more pronounced among employees who already had direct experience of these technologies, a phenomenon that could intensify as deployments become more widespread.
An earlier MIT study covering US industry as a whole, not specific to hospitality, found that one additional robot per thousand workers could reduce local employment by 0.18 to 0.34% and wages by 0.25 to 0.50%. This research, often cited to illustrate the risks of automation, has since been nuanced by more recent studies: several economists consider the occupation-based approach too broad-brush and believe it overstates the proportion of jobs that are genuinely automatable, once the heterogeneity of tasks within a single role is taken into account.
For now, no study specifically measures the impact of robotisation on hotel housekeeping employment in Europe. This is likely to change as deployments multiply across the continent, or risk leaving social partners negotiating without sector-specific data.
France: a social context that could accelerate the shift
In France, several sector-specific dynamics could play an accelerating role in the adoption of housekeeping robotics, though no quantified impact study yet exists to precisely measure its scale. Pressure on payroll costs, combined with declining room-cleaning productivity linked to occupational health directives, along with rising rates of workplace accidents and recognised occupational illnesses in room-cleaning roles, is expected to strengthen operators’ interest in robotic solutions in the years ahead.
The subject remains, at this stage, more anticipated than documented. The sector’s employer organisations are expected to engage on this front, with dedicated hospitality impact studies likely to be launched before long to inform upcoming social negotiations on these issues.
Some industry observers also anticipate a compensating effect: a potential decline in the number of housekeepers in economy hospitality could, in time, benefit the luxury segment. That segment is expected to remain structurally attached to a craft-based model built on human excellence, and could offer a retraining pathway for some of these employees, reinforcing its own teams.
The issue will extend beyond commercial considerations alone: it will bear on the European hospitality industry’s ability to secure, over the long term, access to robotic tools suited to its own operational, social and regulatory constraints, rather than remaining dependent on suppliers based outside Europe.
